I think it’s pretty interesting that Apple considers the announcement of iPad 2 — with absolutely no surprise whatsoever, nothing revolutionary at all — to be worthy of a whole keynote. So it’s a little faster. So it’s a little thinner. So it’s got cameras. What else? Nothing. Really nothing.

It looks like Apple has enjoyed the “using the iPad as a knife” meme, and decided that the new version’s profile should be even sharper. Since Ive promises that it’s more comfortable to hold than before, I’m going to assume that they’ve bothered to make the angle a bit smoother this time, though.

So… it’s thinner. That’s cool. I’d like to say that I don’t care, but I kinda wish I could wake up on March 11th and have my iPad suddenly be a bit thinner, and a bit lighter. Still, it’s not getting to the point that I’d buy a new one. Same thing for the faster processor or the cameras; the only difference I care about is more RAM and, even if assuming that the iPad 2 does finally get 512 MB, it’s not enough to make me upgrade either.

As for the white version, I’ve already said that I hate the idea of a white iPhone — because there’s always gonna be a black border between the bezel and the screen, it makes all the sense in the world for the bezel to be black so that the limit between screen and device disappears. In the iPad’s case, it’s even worse than with the iPhone, as the status bar is always black.

And those covers… damn are they ugly. I’m sure the design is convenient, with the way it folds into a stand (though I have a hard time believing that magnets would be enough for the cover to stay in place while the device is tumbling around in a bag), but… who would want to stick that on their brand-new iPad? If anything, I’m waiting for third-party case manufacturers to play with the magnets. (Apple can’t patent them. Can they?)

I don’t care much about the new apps, except for one thing: Photo Booth made sense on the Mac, since it went with the integrated iSight — and you’re only ever gonna use that to shoot or film yourself. On iOS, you’re taking pictures of your environment much more often than self-portraits; why restrict the system app’s concept to “Photo Booth” instead of simply adding effects to the Camera app? (I doubt it’s because Apple is afraid to encroach on third-party developers’ sales. It’s never stopped them before.) The idea is just silly. And it’s making for one more system icon that you can’t remove, for an app you’re never going to use.

Now the question is: is there something to the rumors of an iPad 3 next fall? It might as well be true, because the rumor’s existence itself is likely to put a damper on the iPad 2’s sales anyway. But there’s going to be proper outrage if Apple makes the new iPad obsolete just six months after it’s been introduced — especially as it’s been presented as a major redesign, instead of the simple spec bump that it really is.

If they release a new iPad before year’s end, they’ll have been somewhat dishonest today. If they don’t, rumormongers will have cost them actual money, more so than ever.

4 March

Similarly, to beat Facebook at social you have to look at its faults, and capitalize on them. Facebook’s Achilles heel is the way it forces its worldview on its users. On Facebook, you can only “like” something. You can’t love it, or hate it, or say it made you laugh, or made you sad, or unequivocally recommend it to your friends, or recommend it with some caveats. You can only “friend” someone, you can’t make someone’s acquaintance, or say they’re an old high school classmate, or the annoying guy who sat behind you in one lecture in college, or an ex-lover. […]

The best way to innovate in social is make a product that helps people express themselves and identify themselves more freely and fully, to capture nuances in identity and relationships that other networks don’t.

In the Snow Leopard Finder, when you change the view style from, say, icon view to list view, that change is applied to all folders unless otherwise specified in the view options. In Lion, when you apply a view style, it’s only applied to that folder, which will always open in that view style. If you uncheck this setting in the view options, that folder will always open in icon view instead.

17 March

I have about 15 apps on my iPhone from great third-party developers and I want to rewrite every single one of them. There is not really anything horrifically wrong with the apps most of the time, but there are the little details missing that drive me nuts or features I’d implement differently. […]

One of the hardest parts of software development is learning to turn your back on this urge and say no.